-: Ghosts :- 59

Mrs. Alving reacts oddly to the Pastor's belief that Oswald resembles his
father.. S~e doesn't like the idea at all. As we will learn by the end of the first
act, this 1s because she very much dislikes her former husband but idealizes
her son ~d i~agines that she has saved him from his father. Yet despite her
°~
internal ~eJechon her former husband's ways, Mrs. Alving is careful to preserve
his pubbc reputation. Thus, she rejects as untrue the anecdote her son tells
about his father forcing him to smoke: she doesn't want either of the men to
know of her late husband's weaknesses.
In Oswald and the Pastor's argument over marriage, we see further
expqsition of their differing world views. Oswald declares that Norwegians
who condemn Italian artists living together unmarried are hypocrites because
they themselves are not free from their own forms of corruption. Little does he
know that his father was prone to such moral decay. Later in the play, Oswald
will complain about the lack of sun in Norway, compared to sunny Italy where
he has been living. Clearly, Oswald takes issue with more than the lack of
natural light in his hometown-he takes issue with the prevailing lack of
intellectual and moral enlightenment.
Just before the Pastor begins to lecture Mrs. Alving, he says that he must
speak to her not as her friend but as her priest. Yet his language is full of the
same stock phrases as usual. He refers to the wife's duty to her husband just as
he referred to the sanctity of marriage to Oswald, or as he spoke to regina
about her duties to Engstrand also as usual, he is always concerned about
public opinion. It angers him that Mrs. Alving endangered his reputation by
fleeing to him when she was in need. (Of course, to his credit, one must
remember that Mrs. Alving was attracted to him sexually, and, thus, her
approach toward him could have been seen as improper). The Pastor also
invoked public opinion when discussing insurance for the orphan asylum,
when condemning Mrs. Alving1s reading selections, and when wondering how
to avoid scandal with his speech at the opening of the memorial asylum.
Mrs. Alving's speech is a watershed. She has apparently never told anyone
else about her husband's failings. Like the Pastor, she inflates her speech with
repetition-the rhetorical pretensions of the educated. Her attitude toward the
Pastor here 'is complex. First, she is arranged that he accused her of betraying
a worthy husband and of treating her son just as badly. But she also thinks of
him as a friend, or at least as someone for whom she previously had romantic
feelings. Also, she is probably concerned to give her speech an air of importance;
after all, her mission for more·than ten years has been to maintain her husband's
good reputation. Now she is destroying that reputation, at least in the Pastor's
mind. In a sense, she is making a confession, even though the aim of her
speech is to absolve herself to guilt.
To understand the rest of the play, it is important to consider how Mrs.
Alving must have felt after returning to her husband. The couple moved out of
town and she lost contact with the Pastor, who was she fond of then, despite
how she feels about him now. She suppressed her "rebellious spirit" and put up